Beaufortia species unidentified

Horticultural & Botanical History

Beaufortia dampieri A.Cunn.: ‘A rare plant, and one of the few shrubs that are to be found upon the barren, loose, sandy downs of Dirk Hartog’s Island, off Shark’s Bay, on the west coast of Australia, where its seeds were gathered in 1822, during the surveying voyage of Capt. P. P. King in H. M. Sloop Bathurst, and from which the living plants which have repeatedly flowered in the Royal Gardens at Kew were raised.’  It has pink flowers.  [BM t.3272/1833].  William Macarthur was a close friend of King’s and this plant is a possibility, although the fact that this name was published in 1833 in Curtis’s Botanical Magazine makes it unlikely.  This plant is used as an illustration here.

History at Camden Park

Listed in all published catalogues [T.140/1843].  It is possible that Macarthur received his plant from contacts in Western Australia or that it was collected on the south or south west coast of Australia by a ship on route to Hobart via the Cape of Good Hope.  Australian plants received by Macarthur from the East India ship Sovereign in 1831 were probably collected in this way.  See also ‘Calothamnus species unidentified’ which was probably received by Macarthur at the same time from the same source.

Notes